


your ears tuned to the roar

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-22
Updated: 2009-11-22
Packaged: 2017-10-03 13:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Jo grows up. (Spoilers for 5.10)</p>
            </blockquote>





	your ears tuned to the roar

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to angelgazing for handholding and title-wrangling.

Jo is seven. Daddy comes home and swings her up into his arms. He smells like smoke and dirt but Jo doesn't care. She snuggles into him and won't let go even when Mommy tries to make her go to bed.

"Go on, now, Jo. Daddy's tired," she says, but Jo shakes her head and clings tighter, tucking her face into Daddy's neck. She listens to the sound of her parents kissing and wrinkles her nose.

"Leave her be, Ellie. I don't mind." Daddy kisses the top of her head and rubs his nose against hers and she giggles. She loves Eskimo kisses. He sits down at the kitchen table and arranges her in his lap while Mommy brings him a cup of coffee and dinner.

She waits until he's done eating to say, "Tell me a story, Daddy."

"Once upon a time, there was a hunter named Ellen," he says, wiping his mouth with his napkin and sitting back in his chair. "She was the toughest hunter in the land." She rests her head against his chest and she can hear his belly rumbling and his heart beating. Her parents look a each other and their faces are all soft and smiley, and Jo sighs and lets her eyes close.

She never hears the end of the story, but that's okay. Daddy will tell her another one tomorrow night.

*

Jo is ten. She hears the words her mother is saying, but they don't make any sense.

"You're lying!" she screams and runs into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. She flings herself on the bed and even though she doesn't believe--she _can't_ believe--what Mom said, she's crying. She's crying so hard it _hurts_ and she can't breathe.

There's a knock at the door. "Jo?" Her mother's voice is soft and uncertain. Jo's never heard her sound like that. "Jo, honey, can I come in?"

Jo can't get enough air to answer at first, hiccups out the word "Yes," so softly she thinks Mom won't be able to hear her, but the door opens with a creak and Mom sits down beside her. Jo throws herself into her mother's arms and presses her face into the soft cotton of her t-shirt. She breathes in the scent of stale beer and sweat and _Mom_.

Mom wraps her arms around Jo and whispers, "It's okay, baby. I've got you," as Jo cries.

But it's not okay. Jo doesn't think it'll ever be okay again.

*

Jo is eighteen. Her roommate thinks she's crazy for pouring salt lines across the threshold of the room and along the windowsills. Every morning, Jo wakes up to the sound of Kerry vacuuming it up, the dustbuster purring like an angry kitten in her hand.

Jo knows she doesn't fit in here, knows she doesn't _want_ to fit in here. She could make the effort, knows she should, for her mother's sake, at least, but it seems so pointless to sit in class and be lectured about the Peloponnesian War or Emma Bovary's affairs when she could be out hunting, making the world a safer place for people.

So it's a relief when she comes home from calculus to find the RA, Kerry, and an officer from campus security standing in their room, the knife she keeps under her pillow unsheathed on the desk.

She meets with an assistant dean, who tells her that she's on probation, and she'll need to have weekly appointments with a psychologist if she wants to stay. She doesn't.

It's dark when she pulls into the Roadhouse parking lot, and she can hear the familiar sounds of the Allman Brothers on the jukebox.

She sits in her truck for a few minutes, because even though she knows coming home was the right thing for her--hunting is the right thing for her--she's not looking forward to explaining it to her mother.

As soon as the door swings shut behind her, she can feel her mother's gaze on her. Mom's out from behind the bar faster than Jo expected, pulling her into a tight hug, question on her face and in her voice.

"Jo? Are you all right? What happened?"

"I didn't belong there, Mom." Jo lays her head on her mother's shoulder. "I needed to come home." Jo knows the lecture is coming, but for tonight at least, her mother lets it go.

*

Jo is twenty-two. She's muddy and soaked to the skin, and she has a laceration on her left calf that might need stitches. She strips off her wet clothes and leaves them on the floor of the motel bathroom. The shower is hot and she thinks she might stay beneath it until the water goes cold. She's not sure if her lightheadedness is from loss of blood or lack of sleep or the fact that the only thing she's put in her stomach over the past eighteen hours has been coffee. She leans against the cool tile and washes out the cut on her calf; she can probably get away without stitches, but she might need a tetanus shot. She'll think about it in the morning.

She's rinsing the conditioner out of her hair and contemplating, not for the first time, cutting it all off, when her phone starts ringing.

She thinks about letting it go to voicemail, but it could be important. She's got another job lined up after this one, and if someone else has died, she'll need to get back on the road right away instead of spending the rest of the night sleeping.

"Yeah?"

"Jo? Joanna Beth, are you all right?" They haven't spoken in months, though Jo sends postcards whenever she gets the chance, to make sure her mother knows she's not dead yet. There's a note in her mother's voice that sends a chill down Jo's spine, and not because she just got out of a hot shower and is standing in her air conditioned motel room wrapped in a towel.

"Mom?"

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Mom. Just tired is all. What's wrong?"

"Ash, the bar, everything--" Her voice cracks, and Jo sits down on the bed, bracing herself for whatever it is Mom is trying to tell her. "There was a fire."

"Oh, God. Are you okay?"

"I'm okay. I'm okay." She doesn't sound okay. "I'm heading to Bobby's. I just--I needed to hear your voice."

"I'll meet you there," Jo says.

"Be careful."

"You, too." She can still hear Mom breathing, so instead of hanging up, she says, "Mom, I love you."

"I love you, too, baby."

It takes Jo ten minutes to dress and pack up her stuff, and then she's on the road again. She blinks exhaustion away and tries not to think about how she can never go home again.

*

Jo is twenty-four. She's bleeding out on the floor of a hardware store in Carthage, Missouri. She can't move her legs. She can't even feel her legs. All she can feel is the pain in her gut, and the cold sweat prickling down her spine. She has to fight to stay conscious, to focus. She wonders if she should have slept with Dean last night. She's glad she didn't (mostly), even knowing she'll never have the chance again.

She can hear the fear in their voices, the knowledge that she's not making it out of this alive.

Mom is right there next to her, holding her hand, trying to stop the bleeding, brushing her hair out of her eyes, like Jo's still a little kid. Jo wishes she was still a little kid, that she didn't know what it felt like to bleed out on the floor of a hardware store in the middle of a ghost town.

She explains her plan, knows it's the only way, knows they know it too, even though they don't want to believe it.

She drifts in and out of consciousness while they set everything up. She feels Sam take her hand, whisper his apologies and his goodbyes. She lets go of the last lingering vestiges of anger at him and smiles.

Dean is next. He puts the detonator in her hand, curls her limp fingers around it, and gives her a soft, sad look. His lips are warm against her forehead, sweet against her mouth. She remembers what he'd said to her the first time they met and wonders what would have happened if it had ever been the right time, right place. Knows it doesn't matter now.

Then her mother sits down next to her, eyes bright with tears and love. "I'm not leaving you alone," she says, and Jo isn't strong enough to fight her one last time.

She nestles against her mother, breathes in the scent of sweat and home over the copper tang of her own blood. Mom kisses the top of her head and whispers, "I will always love you, baby."

Jo is twenty-four. She dies in her mother's arms on the floor of a hardware store in Carthage, Missouri.

end

~*~

**Author's Note:**

> Ellen's lines in the last section are quoted directly from 5.10. Title from Springsteen.


End file.
